Piano: C# Harmonic Minor Over the Changes

C# Harmonic Minor runs 7 notes to the octave, laid out here across 88 keys with every C# flagged. Mid-chorus the pattern is not what you need; where the root is when the chord changes underneath you is.

Dark and dramatic. The raised 7th pulls hard toward the tonic, and the wide step from the b6 up to it gives the scale an exotic, almost Middle-Eastern tension.

Heard in: Classical minor-key harmony, neoclassical metal (Yngwie Malmsteen), flamenco-tinged rock, klezmer, and Balkan melodies.

The right hand takes the line and the left keeps stating the chord under it, which makes a scale at this seat a two-handed problem: the notes have to work against a voicing you are choosing at the same time.

Play it slowly against the audio until it stops being a shape, then put it over two bars of a form and let the chord tones decide which of the notes you actually keep.